Nov 20, 2008 7:11 pm US/Eastern
HealthWatch: Artificial Heart Saves SC Teen
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
A 14-year-old girl defied all expectations and lived for nearly four months without a heart.
D'Zhana Simmons has been called a walking miracle.
"I felt like I was a face person, like I really didn't exist," D'Zhana said.
Last June, the South Carolina teen went to Jackson Memorial's Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami with a condition called dilated cardiomyopathy.
The illness made her heart too weak to pump blood effectively.
D'Zhana received a transplant, but doctors had to remove it a few days later – and replaced it with a custom-made, artificial hear that kept her alive for the 118 days until she could receive another transplant.
"The first two months were quite difficult, because she was very sick," Dr. Marco Ricci, Director of Pediatric Surgery, said. "Then she recovered, and we were eventually able to proceed with the second heart transplant operation."
"It was scary, because you never knew if something was going to go wrong," Twolla Anderson, D'Zhana's mother, said. "I am so thankful for the doctors."
"I feel better," D'Zhana says. "I feel stronger, and I can walk."
The procedure is not entirely experimental. It was once used for more than nine months on an adult man, but never before for this long on a child.
The technology for these assist devices, or artificial hearts, has progressed dramatically over the years," Dr. Marrick Kukin, of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, said.
Kukin, a cardiologist that specializes in heart failure, says that as medicine continues to advance, people may see more miracle stories like D'Zhana's.
"The technology's improving, the size is improving, the battery power's increasing," Kukin said. "The risk of infection and embolization, [of] blood clots, is decreasing. We're making huge strides in this field."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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